Bottom of the Barrel Undergrad
Hello everyone, I'm graduating in May '13 with a degree in finance from a completely unknown state school. The business department is pretty weak, and they recently took away options to double major/minor which really put a damper on my recent plans to grab a minor in accounting as well.
I've been pretty passive throughout school. Went to a community college first where I did terrible (2.90 GPA), and then transferred to the state school where I've recently picked up the slack and should be graduating with around a 3.5 GPA)
My junior year is when I transferred and was still unsure about my direction in business. I talked to my adviser and mentioned my interest in finance. She did not feel the need to even bring up summer internships, her general advice is "Keep up with the A's and B's and you'll find good work."
So now only 7 months away from graduation have I decided to pick up my ass and actually take interest in the details of my life without blindly listening to the advise of my school.
I'm unsure what my next step is. I am much more interested to work in a financial position with a company outside of IB/PE. However, I am not sure how to find finance related work in industries outside of banking.
Any advice would be appreciated.
It's pretty hard to get white collar employment at a large company that isn't through your school or networking these days (I know too many unemployed college grads) and so career services would be your best bet. You could also try a placement/search agency, try boutique firms (for any profession) or network by contacting current employees. 3.5 is a bit low relative to the competition (assuming you go to a no name school and not a state flagship like a University of Maryland or something) for corp finance at a bank, or top engineering company but all companies have finance depts you can join (consumer retail like pepperidge farm, BK, etc so its not like you won't be in finance if you really want to get in). BB Wealth management is also relatively easy to get and could help you out if your interested in investments. If your interested in "high finance" try boutiques in smaller/non finance states like Missouri, Tennessee, Colorado, etc where they mostly take local kids and are very open to non targets because its hard to get kids from the top schools to want to work in a place that isn't nyc/chicago/la/houston, etc.
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